


blood and soft stitches

by overtlyobscure



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: But I'm also very mad at him, F/M, I Love Solas, and so is my Lavellan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 13:25:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16787821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overtlyobscure/pseuds/overtlyobscure
Summary: Given time, Lavellan believed she might find forgiveness for Solas, for the things she suspects him of





	blood and soft stitches

**Author's Note:**

> Took me like a whole eight months to buck up the courage to post a fic so here we go. Might turn this into a series since I'll have some time to write soon. But we shall see.

Given time, Lavellan believed she might find forgiveness for Solas, for the things she suspects him of. She expects her anger at the war for stripping her of her people might cool, at least a little. But the grief she’s inherited from her years in the Inquisition still lurks like a wolf at the edges of her thoughts. And she, as always, is still a force of nature merely waiting to be unleashed.

She is a hurricane upon arrival to the Exalted Council, a swirling mire of emotion that builds behind the mask she’s donned. Her rage is a quiet beast, pacing in its cage as she resumes her role as Inquisitor and tempers her baser instincts once more in favor of the niceties that are expected of her.

Josephine has outdone herself with Lavellan’s new uniform. A resplendent thing of clean lines and rich color, an undeniable statement of her power etched in the metal toggles that pierce the air like wicked claws and weigh heavy at her collar. Never mind that Lavellan’s heritage is all but invisible once she’s all buckled up and buttoned in. She has never felt more unlike herself. She thanks the Creators that her vallaslin, bright as the day she received them, still swoop and swirl over her cheek, a blood red reminder to all the she will always be Dalish. And that her people will never forget.

Lavellan navigates the mine field of the Game in an old, familiar dance. The steps make her nauseous, and the false pleasantries she exchanges at every corner are near enough to bring her to her knees. Her old companions are there at least, providing a sort of fragile comfort in the moments she can escape the stifling council chambers.

Dorian, ever observant and ever a worrier despite all his bluster, is there to distract her with a bottle of wine and a new series of complaints about the Magisterium. Varric, too, takes little persuasion to join her and the Chargers at the modest tavern, Sera belting some bawdy chanty while Cole swings his legs from his perch near Maryden.

Blackwall, or Thom, she supposes, is stalwart as ever, a solid presence at her shoulder to keep her feet planted on the ground. It has been two long years of letter exchanges and she can feel the attraction she’d once forsook in favor of another lingering still in her chest. She sees it reflected it in Thom’s eyes and thinks that maybe his is a hearth she could settle at when all this is said and done with.

Her council wants to save the Inquisition. Lavellan snarls at the this. Orlais would see them leashed to the empire, or else utterly destroyed, before they ever retained their own freedom, a solution which is beyond comprehensible. She herself is inclined to put the whole thing to rest. Before they can become what Arl Teagan fears. And the scars that Lavellan is still nursing are more than she can bear to add to. 

“Let it be done with,” she says and leaves for her chambers in the wake of her advisors’ protestations.

She is so tired. She has had enough of being stripped of the things she holds dear for the sake of the world. There was a time, when the pain of losing her son still plagued her, that the Inquisition was just the place to try and outrun her grief. She is older now, weary and bloodied and exhausted. Now she only wants to put her grief to rest.

Thom comes to her then. He has a sort of sense for such things. He finds her half unbuttoned from her coat, slumped on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands, the anchor flaring in arcs of lightning up her forearm.

She shudders and leans against his offered shoulder and forces herself not to cry. The pain is indescribable, and she knows at once that the anchor is going to kill her. Thom’s grip on her waist tells her that he knows it too. and the tightening of his fingers on her hips says that he intends to keep her here, whatever the cost. 

She meets his resolution with a kiss, hard and desperate. His hands, worn and callused from his sword, are rough against her bare skin. He is solid beneath her, firmly attached to the earth in ways that she has never been, especially now that he has faced his demons and she is still chasing after hers. 

Theirs is not a gentle exchange. It is a thing of force and bruises, a thing that leaves them both marked by the other, a sort of reminder of each others’ continued existence. Of their presence in each others’ lives. Lavellan carries the marks through the mirror, into the network of eluvians as they hunt on the heels of their adversaries.

The Crossroads are a thing of beauty, the ruins they contain a reminder of the former Elvhen empire’s long ago glory. It fills Lavellan only with a new sort of anger, the kind that struggles to reconcile the magnificent heights her people once reached with the subjugation they now face. It’s moments like these that she would see the world burn for the suffering its dealt.

When Solas first disappeared, the suspicions she’d been harboring were all but confirmed. Their relationship had long been ended when she at last saw Corypheus’ destruction. Solas’ unerring disdain for her people, for their people despite what he may have protested, was more than she could tolerate. One last little insult to add the ever growing pile of insults against the elves was all it took. 

“Oh, you mean elves,” he’d said.

And that was that. The value of all the knowledge he possessed would never be enough to make up for the inadequacy he made her feel. Not when she was so fiercely, proudly Dalish. Not when she had always refused to bend for those who would see her break.

That Solas would be another in a long line of many who sought to force her to change for his imagined ideals was untenable. 

She sees his image in the rubble and knows that he is as ancient as she believed him to be. She had known him to be an elf of Arlathan the moment she’d laid eyes on Abelas at the Temple of Mythal all those years ago. Not even Solas, with his carefully crafted persona, could disguise that he and the sentinels were two sides of the same coin.

The deeper they travel, the more Lavellan understands that Solas is more than simply ancient Elvhen. She sees him, enshrined in the Crossroads, a great, black wolf at his back and knows at once who he is.

The storm inside her is replaced then with an inferno that rages in her blood, hot and unquenchable.

The anchor, which has been a constant throb in the palm of her hand, explodes, an apparent reflection of the outrage that’s burning within her. 

The magic that discharges from the mark is enough to knock her companions to the ground, and she blinks face-down in the mud, disoriented and bleeding. Inspection of her arm reveals a spiderweb of raised white scars where the magic burned its way across her flesh. Thom cups her chin and draws a thumb across her cheek, and she can feel the sting, understands that the anchor has left its mark there too. 

She knows that Solas, that Fen’Harel, is the only one who might prevent the anchor from killing her. 

They stumble out of the arena where the Qun housed their dragon, trailing in the wake of the beast as its wings unfold and carry it out of sight over the horizon. Lavellan struggles up the steps to the last Eluvian, marked arm limp and useless at her side, a trail of blood dripping out of her nose and off her chin. 

She watches Fen’Harel turn his enemies to stone and forces herself to stay on her feet when the anchor bursts open again, drawing another pained cry forth from her chest. She can barely breathe when the magic at last calms. She gleans a small measure of satisfaction all the same from the look on the Dread Wolf’s face when he sees the mess he’s made.

She calls him Fen’Harel before he even has a chance to speak. She has lost most everything, and now she’ll take whatever small victory she can. She has no patience, no mercy, for a man who has told as many lies as he has, who would destroy her people before he would ever help them.

She coaxes what information she can from him with carefully measured distance. The Dread Wolf has a silver tongue, but hers too is well trained after so many years of playing every role she was ever expected to fill. He foretells destruction, of the world, of himself. She feels the flames rise inside her at his stubborn resignation, at his refusal to accept his own mistakes.

She thought she loved him once. Now she would see him dead at her own hand before he can toy with the fabric of her world a second time.

The anchor explodes once more, enough to bring Lavellan to her knees. Fen’Harel knows too that she has little time before his magic kills her, and he approaches her in that loping sort of gait she’d seen only once before. The stride of an ancient god.

“Vhenan,” he says, and she nearly spits on him.

“I am not your vhenan,” she says instead, teeth stained with the blood that’s dripping sluggishly off her lips, “I was never your vhenan.”

He sees her anger and still dares to touch her, placing his hands on her shoulders as he kneels before her. She snarls at him, a guttural, animalistic sound, when he presses his lips to her forehead. She thinks she might kill him right there if only she had the strength to draw on her magic.

“I am sorry, vhenan.”

His eyes fill with cold blue light, and she can do little but focus on her outrage to carry her through the pain. She feels the anchor pulled forth from her palm, and the feeling is not unlike water being drawn from her lungs.

Fen’Harel approaches his eluvian, and she watches in silence as he disappears.

Her arm is in ruins when she at last drags herself back to her companions, the vestiges of the anchor’s magic burning trails from her hand to her neck and back again. 

“It has to come off,” she manages to say and turns her eyes to Thom, who only nods.

It is a good thing he is practiced with the sword as he does the job with only one swing. She passes out all the same.

She awakes, disoriented and sore to her bones. Dorian is there, hovering just above her, his hand clasped above the apex of her elbow. Her eyes focus on the blood that stains his robes, and she knows it is hers.

Her arm is gone, she realizes, along with the anchor. Along with Fen’Harel. 

She chances a glance at the space her arm once occupied and nearly passes out again. There one moment and gone the next, it’s a bit much to process, even for her. Thom helps her stand, and she sways on her feet but manages to stay upright.

It’s a long trek out of the Crossroads. Blood loss has made her slow and woozy, stumbling over her own feet as she walks. Thom offers to carry her but her sharp refusal stops the question from arising a second time. 

Her anger, which has built to a fever pitch, is the only thing that carries her onward. It’s still with her, stirring behind her ribs, when she wakes up in the infirmary after dropping off, exhausted, against Thom’s shoulder while a healer had attended to her wounds. 

Her arm is easier to take in, bandaged as it is. Her fingers trace the raised paths left by the anchor, stark white against the red loops of her vallaslin. Her wounds are only just healed but still the Exalted Council awaits, no patience even for losses such as hers.

Lavellan pins the sleeve of her coat up around the remains of her bicep and marches into the council chambers, the rite which first birthed the Inquisition gripped in her only hand. She raises the tome, heavy with the deeds her organization has committed, and pronounces the Inquisition disbanded in a speech so dripping with her outrage it can barely be called even that.

She turns on her heel and pushes out the door and leaves her fury behind, the fire extinguished all at once and replaced only by an empty sort of defeat. She wanders at an aimless pace, finds herself at the railing of an empty porch at the rear of the palace. She stares out over the water, eyes drifting upward to the scarred horizon where faint green light still shifts even now.

There are no answers to be found there in the scattered clouds. She had hoped that the council would mean the end of her time with the Inquisition, that she might finally be given the space to grieve and rebuild a life for herself with the few pieces she has left. 

She wants to walk away, to disappear. The Inquisition is dead, and she has no great and terrible title to bind her to this life. She is alone now, she knows, bereft of purpose and people, her family dead, the cause she once spearheaded torn to pieces by her own hand.

But Solas, Fen’Harel . . .

He seeks to burn her world, and any affection she might have once held for him will never be enough to save him from the end she intends to deliver him.

Lavellan thinks of Thom and the life they might have sought together. She realizes there are no gentle endings for people such as herself and returns to her chambers, alone, to trade her uniform for armor, worn and bloodied and distinctly Dalish. 

She leaves him a note, at least. So that she will not simply disappear. So that he will not be left with nothing. It is a poor attempt at softening the blow of her departure.

Her hart is waiting at the stables, impatient in his stall, his hooves marking paths in the dirt at the sight of her staff and the pack slung over her shoulder. There is no fanfare to greet her as she slips through the dark streets of the city and through the gates to greet the chilly, night breeze that is shifting in the trees. Her hart is silent as she presses her heels to his sides.

She is not the Inquisitor now. She is only a Dalish elf, exhausted and filled with an unnameable sort of anger. 

She is alone, and there is work to be done.


End file.
